Several type of granulator dispensers or dispensers for particulated material are on the market. Such granulator dispensers incorporate spindles in a vertical or horizontal position, and include spiral shaped scrapers encircling an evaporator, so that it simultaneously carries out a scraping and stirring function. The configuration of the granulator dispenser determines the movement of the granulated chilled, iced, partially frozen or frozen product towards a dispensing valve.
Current dispensing systems in the field of Sorbettiera type of machines are targeted to work with water based products (e.g. granite). These types of products are in the overrun range of 0-40% or below and are fat free (or very low fat) products. Typical products which are dispensed from such machines are pasty or liquid products such as drinkable water ice, granite, slush, etc.
In this type of machines the product mass is typically added at ambient temperature as liquid or liquid and powder, into a hopper in batches and stored between a couple of hours up to 10 days. The product is cooled by means of an evaporator and the product which has been cooled, is then scraped from the evaporator's cooling surface. The product is then dispensed via a dispensing valve in servings.
It has been found that Sorbettiera dispensing machines are little suited for dairy based products with 20-85% overrun. Existing machines provide issue of poor overrun stability and no control of the product behavior in the dispenser in particular if the product is stored for several days in the dispenser.
The performance of the machine depends on its throughput and to the behavior of the product in the machine. In order to achieve a reasonable throughput in terms of number of portions that can be served it is important to understand the interactions between the product and the machine.
There is therefore a need for a dispenser which allows high number of product servings per batch of product to be dispensed in particular of products with higher overrun such as e.g. an overrun from 20 to 85% without substantially loss in overrun during storage or dispensing.